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Ed can hardly think through the pain.
It’s an entire universe of pain—stardust in every molecule exploding into supernovae behind his eyelids and molten white quasars sucked up into oblivion by black holes and chaos erupting into a scream that burns his throat coming out. It’s fear and desperation stabbing his heart like hunting knives, white-hot panic slicing through the layers of his being as he watches the only family he has left ripped away from him.
There is a massive eye bisecting their masterpiece, the iris multi-ringed like the trunk of a tree, ancient and infinite. It watches without passion as phantom black limbs peel the existence from Al’s body.
Al screams and thrashes against oblivion and he’s crying, bleating like an injured deer for someone to save him, please Brother, please— All Ed knows in that moment is the pain and fear imprinted upon every inch of his own being, reflected back at him in his brother’s terrified eyes.
Everything in him rebels as he reaches out with his own dissolving fingers. Pain lanced up his legs as they are unwound by the reaction, skin peeling off bones that vanish into dust. It gets greedier as it goes on, faster and faster and faster. Ed bites back a scream as he reaches—
He’s my only family you can’t take him he’s my little brother he’s all I have left no no nonononono—
Palm grasps palm. Ed squeezes tight and he’s never letting go never letting go never letting—
Horror consumes his entire being as his wrist unwinds.
—go.
For a fraction of a moment, before both hands vanish into nonexistence, Ed finds himself staring at his own dismembered hand, staring at the stump that once connected his palm to the length of his extremity. He sees blood and muscle and tendon, all juicy red against the firm whiteness of bone—
Then fresh pain hits.
He screams—no, roars—as his vision burns, stealing away the image of his brother’s face. White supernova sparks explode against blackness, flashing intermittently between light and dark for what feels like the stretch of eternity.
When his vision focuses again, the last thing he sees of Al is a single wide, golden eye.
Then that, too, vanishes.
Grief and desperation form a blind howl in Ed’s burning throat. This isn’t what they wanted. This isn’t what they wanted.
This isn’t—
Can't breathe as lungs unravel into flesh ribbons.
—what they—
Heart pounding as it becomes dust.
—wanted—
He is still crying out desperately as his face begins to fall apart, the once-certain molecular bonds that bound him together coming apart without resistance, as though they were barely holding him together in the first place. It hurts and hurts and hurts, he can’t breathe, he can't think, he can't see—
Edward Elric, eleven-years-old and desperately alone, is still screaming as he ceases to exist.
There is whiteness and a cheshire smile and a gargantuan Gate inscribed with alchemy symbols he feels he should know. It presses pause upon his terror and desperation, an insatiable curiosity filling the space instead—
But then he starts coming undone again and he remembers—
“Gimme back my brother,” he spits, scared and furious and trembling, “you son of a bitch—”
“You want him that badly?” Truth grins, wide and gruesome. “Alright, al-che-mist! You two can be together from now on!”
Ed screams as the white hall crumbles. That smile sears into his very being.
When his eyes snap open, he is consumed for a moment by the tumult of panic and horror and fury, thrumming white-hot in his blood, heart pulsing, he’s my brother GIVE HIM BACK—
Then—he feels Al. Somehow. A presence as close to him as his own heartbeat, as the breath inside his lungs, a life thrumming alongside his own. The storm collapses in on itself before it can gain too much traction, struck down by the utter certainty that his brother alive and the swell of relief that is born from this knowledge. For a fraction of a moment, he wants to collapse on the ground and weep in solace.
The next moment, though, pain hits—it is not the pain from before, not blinding and all-consuming, the feeling of your entire physical being shredded into oblivion. But it is diffuse and aching, the sort of pain that bleeds into your thoughts, muddies words and sensations until you cannot determine which way is up.
Ed groans, struck with a sudden urge to heave up his stomach contents, but his body feels wrong, he doesn’t know where his arms are, he can’t make sense of it, can’t determine anything over the sheer ache. He’s hot and cold all at once, panting desperately but his lungs refuse to fill. There’s something in the way, something keeping him from breathing right, his mouth isn’t right and he can hardly see straight and the very air is grating against his insides (why is there air on his insides?), sending fresh aching through his entire being.
Something coats the floor underneath him, the wetness warm and sticky beneath his head as it clots in his hair. His vision teeters dangerously towards darkness, but he thinks the pool is dark red—but where would all that blood come from? Dizzily, he watches as it spreads across the one-pristine lines of white chalk, contaminating, congealing.
His chest seizes and he chokes a gasp. Every bone pulses hotly inside him. It feels as though he’s been impaled from the inside out. Thinking hurts. Breathing hurts. The last time he felt like this was Yock Island, when hunger twisted his empty stomach into knots so tight he thought it might snap him apart—it’s the same feeling, the same dimness and aching that comes from death creeping in, silent as a whisper.
Al’s life pulses beside him, pale with terror and pain, small whimpers jolting him, keeping him from succumbing entirely to unconsciousness. Getting weaker, slipping, sand through his fingers—
No.
Desperation guides him through the blinding pain and he fumbles around desperately. His arms don’t know themselves, struggle to obey his commands—but he must do something right, because fingers meet chalk lines, and then—
And then he thinks about the medical texts he and Al studied over the years, the pages yellow and dog-eared at the ends from constant flipping. He knows how to translate that into alchemy. It’s understanding first, then from there simply a matter of deconstruction and reconstruction.
Blue-white energy floods his vision. Snap, crackle, alchemy at work—
RIBS—too large, shrink them down.
ORGANS—swollen, pulsing, they go inside.
SKIN—too loose, tighten up, sew up the belly.
JOINTS—aching, they bend this way.
SPINE—crooked, straighten it out.
NERVES. BONES. MUSCLES. TENDONS.
(WATER, thirty-five liters; CARBON, twenty kilograms; AMMONIA, four liters; LIME—)
TRANSMUTE.
It feels like an eternity before the light fades. His arms falls limp against the floor, his muscles aching from the contortion, his lungs struggling to draw breath after such a massive exertion. But the pain from before has gone, replaced with a different soreness—it reminds him of the time he dislocated his shoulder and Teacher wrenched it back into place. The pain that came with it had made him cry out, but it had been pleasant in a way, his body rejoicing at having all its parts correctly fitting together.
Exhaustion floods him wholly the next moment. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to stay conscious much longer, but at least Al is okay. Al is safe and that is what matters.
Brother? Al’s whisper curls through his mind, but he somehow knows he isn’t imagining it. His brother’s presence is so starkly there that it cannot be a delusion of any kind.
I’m here, Ed manages, his eyes sliding closed. He catches a glimpse of the white chalk lines before darkness fills his vision, ruby-warm beneath his eyelids. Don’t worry, Al, I’m here.
With his last conscious thought, Ed wonders how he ended up in the center of the circle.
A high-pitched noise rouses Al into wakefulness.
Calling it wakefulness is being generous, though. He floats for a minute in that hazy grayness somewhere between awake and asleep. Stiffness holds every muscle in him captive. His eyes feel dry and grimy. There’s a gritty texture in his mouth that tastes faintly of sulfur. And then his insides—they feel heavy, like someone stuffed his stomach with rocks.
He’s facing the ceiling, lying on his back. Air teases at every inch of his skin. On some level, he’s aware that he probably shouldn’t just be lying here like this, that he should move or something. But he’s too tired, can’t think straight. His head feels full of glue.
Brother is... somewhere, that much Al is certain. He can practically hear Ed’s heartbeat, feel his breathing. But not feel it? It’s strange and Al is tired. All he cares about is that Brother is here, and that comforts him.
His vision blurs around a blonde-haired figure standing in the doorway, trembling. He cannot make out her face—her? Al is fairly confident the figure is a girl. A girl his age, maybe. He thinks he should know her, but he’s so tired, he can’t really think, doesn’t really want to.
Winry, Brother’s voice jabs at him, sounding just as tired as Al feels. It’s Winry, y’dolt.
Oh yeah, Al thinks, exhaling through his nose and feeling a little stupid. He should have known that.
Dazedly, he watches as she approaches stiltedly. One step. Two. She stops at the circle’s edge.
“Who are you?” she asks, voice shaking.
He should probably answer, but at that moment, inconveniently enough, he sinks into unconsciousness again.
Al has a dream in which someone is carrying him over their shoulder. Or maybe he’s going down the steps. He knows there’s black hair in his vision, but the only person he can think of at the moment with black hair like that—long and coarse and thick—is Teacher, and what would she be doing in Risembool?
He dreams about sheets and antiseptic, bright lights and people talking. Voices he both recognizes and doesn’t. Granny hovering over him with a doctor’s mask replacing her mouth. Winry’s shrieking voice as she sobs and cries—Brother huffs and mutters something about crybabies, but the words are too slurred for Al to make out.
He dreams about the Gate drawing him in like a gravity well, dreams of reaching for a silhouette that looks so much like Mom he can’t not reach out. But when someone grabs his hand, he looks back to see that it’s half his face staring back at him, stretching into an obscene grin.
Ed feels more there when he wakes up.
It’s not that he didn’t feel “there” before, but—he felt strangely buoyant, like he was drifting along the current of a vast emptiness in which only sight and sound grounded him, kept him from being lost to a void where no physical sensation existed. Now he feels anchored by the weight of his own skeleton, pinned to something solid but soft underneath him.
He can feel Al with each heartbeat, his presence warm and sleepy against Ed’s own. Relief settles in Ed, a gentle sigh through parted lips. Al’s here, Al’s okay, they’re together, that’s what matters.
A sudden image flickers in his mind—two hands clasped tight around each other as they disintegrate into nothing.
Ed’s eyes snap open.
It hits him so hard he can barely breathe. The transmutation—the Gate—the Eye—Al—
—Alphonse—
Dull pain slams into his belly. He gasps through clenched teeth, taking one hand and pressing it against the throbbing in his abdomen. A ragged groan builds in his throat.
Brother? Al’s voice sounds impossibly close. If Ed were more awake, he could have sworn it was coming from inside his head. What’s going on? Are you alright?
“M’okay.” His mouth feels weird. His voice sounds weird. Raspy and croaking as it comes out, like it’s never been used before. Even then, it doesn’t sound like his.
As the seconds tick by, something pricks at his instincts. Something is wrong, somehow. He can’t put his finger on it, but it bothers him. He presses his hand harder against his stomach, willing the pain to quiet so he can think straight.
The groan of hinges makes him turn. An ache of stiffness shoots down his spine at the action, but doing so rewards him with the sight of the door—a door he doesn’t recognize, he realizes with a frown—creaking open. A shiny black nose pokes around the lip of the doorway, followed by the sleek black head of a familiar canine.
Den?
But if Den’s here, that means... Ed’s brows furrow. That means they’re at the Rockbell house. How did they...?
Den’s automail leg squeaks as she pads in, but everything about her body rings with tension. Her ears are back, hackles raised, tail stiff instead of wagging like usual. Teeth glint behind a quivering lip. For the first time, Ed finds his nerves tingling at her presence.
His shoulders and back protest as he attempts to sit up. The movement snaps her attention onto him—the change is instantaneous. All of a sudden her lips curl back to reveal long yellow fangs, the fur along her spine lifting as she snarls at him.
Ed freezes, heart thumping in his throat. He feels Al tense up.
Furious barking booms through the air like thunderclaps. Her eyes blaze with murderous intent.
What the hell.
The door opens wider. Ed catches a flash of blonde before Den is hooked around the collar and forcibly dragged out of the room. All the while, the dog snarls and barks and howls in outrage, as though she would like nothing more than to tear him to pieces.
Again. What the hell.
“Get out,” snaps a familiar voice. Den is shoved out the door, which is then slammed shut. The thick wood muffles the insistent scratching and barking on the other side, but does not mute it. Unease curls thickly in Ed’s stomach.
The blonde figure heaves a colossal sigh and presses her forehead against the door. He takes in the familiar floral-print dress, the white apron that he vaguely recognizes, the bony hands laid flat against the wood. His brows furrow as the pieces begin to connect.
“...Winry?” It shouldn’t surprise him so much, if he really is in the Rockbell house. But her hair is down instead of in its usual ponytail, looking stringier than he remembers, as though it was teased by nervous fingers. It drapes her shoulders like a funeral shroud, ages her. He almost didn't recognize her.
At the sound of his voice, she goes ramrod straight. In the span of a heartbeat, she has suddenly whirled around, blonde hair flashing through the air so sharply it could cut steel. Before he can process it, she looms over him like the onset of a storm, dark and foreboding as it gathers on the horizon, bristling with lightning waiting to be loosed. “What did you say?”
It’s her face that strikes him more than her sudden appearance at his bedside. She's pale, like the first light of dawn over the wreckage brought about by a violent storm. A haggardness he has only seen once before, when her parents' funeral made her weep, has made her jaw bonier and created faint lines of stress in the furrow of her brow. Dark bags pool beneath bloodshot eyes, blue irises all the more vivid against the capillaries—and there's a wildness about her, a desperation rubbed raw.
“I...” Her presence seems to swamp him, threatens to overwhelm with the sheer intensity of it. He swallows the dryness in his throat. “Said your name?”
“How did you know it?” she demands. Her voice sounds raw from crying.
Unease transforms into apprehension, tight and thrumming in his aching guts. Al whimpers, shrinking back. Ed curls his hands, feeling linen sheets ball up beneath his fingers. “Well, geez! You grow up next to someone for eleven years and you kinda learn their name, y’know?”
For a long moment, she is tight-lipped and deathly still. The shadows beneath her eyes are deep and dark, purple-black bruises like thump-prints pressed against papery skin. Lines on her forehead he doesn’t remember being there before. Her bottom lip trembles the way it does when she’s furious or about to cry, and Ed suddenly cannot tell which.
Finally, she draws in a gasping breath, her eyes growing wide as she draws back sharply. No, “draws back” is too generous a term. This is a fully-body flinch, one that demands she pull away because she has gotten too-close to a source of danger.
So why does she pull away from him?
“Ed?” She chokes around his name like it’s a chicken bone that got stuck in her throat.
“W-Who do ya think?” The apprehension buzzing beneath Ed’s skin is more intense than he’s ever felt before. It makes his insides writhe, makes him twitchy with the need to jump out of his skin. And Al—
Because her reaction isn’t right. She shouldn’t—shouldn’t be looking at him like that, wide-eyed and horrified as though she doesn’t trust her own eyes. Shouldn’t be shaking, eyes glassy, hands curling into fists so tight her knuckles are going white.
“How,” she starts, then shakes her head furiously. Flaxen hair whips everywhere.
Inertia has imbued a horrid stiffness in his muscles, conspiring to keep him from sitting up. He barely manages to succeed before the dull ache in his stomach spasms, all of a sudden, sending hot pain bolting up his abdomen. A ragged gasp leaves him as he instinctively presses a hand to the offending spot.
“Lie down, you idiot!” Hands grip his shoulders and ease him back into a lying position. Hovering over him, Winry’s cheeks are suddenly lurid with color, long strands of hair sticking to the outer edges of her eyes, where moisture is starting to spill. “You— ...we had to completely rearrange your insides!”
WHAT? comes Al’s deafening shout. It’s right in Ed’s ear and he flinches at the sound of it.
“Oh,” Ed croaks. At the edge of his vision, he notices a pressure bag of some clear fluid. Saline or morphine or something. He can never tell the difference between the two. Either way, that explains why his guts are throbbing like he swallowed hot coals. Distantly, he wonders if this is how Teacher feels on her bad days.
She stares at him for a second with eyes that look fractured inside. And from those fractures, if you look deep enough, you can glimpse something dark and roiling inside, barely visible. From here, it looks like panic, like the waters of hysteria rising up to drown her. “...what happened to you, Ed?”
“S’what ‘m tryna find out.” Ed consults his memory—it’s a jangling mess of pain and bright lights and darkness, mixed up and muddled, clarity lost amongst the whirlpool of intense sensation and panic that defined that night. He doesn’t entirely remember what happened after the Gate spat him back out, but he knows Al was with him, is still with him, and he lets that certainty ground him. “What about Al? Is he okay?”
Her grip on his shoulder abruptly tightens. He can feel where her nails dig into him, the sharp and uneven cut of them against his skin. She’s been biting them, he realizes. She’s never done that before.
“I... I’m sorry, Ed,” she chokes out. Her throat spasms with a sob. “We didn’t find him.”
What? Bemusement taints Al’s tone, for the most part masking the inflection of panic buried there. For the most part.
Ed swallows thickly around the tightness settling in his ribcage. “What are you talking about?”
Winry, Al says slowly, just this side of terrified. I’m right here.
She sniffles, a single fat tear spills out from her right eye. It looks like molten crystal as it slowly traces a path down her flushed cheek. “We only found you.”
That—That doesn’t make sense. Al’s here. Ed can hear him, can feel him.
She can’t see me. Al’s voice cracks beneath the weight of the realization. A fresh shock of horror flashes beside Ed—not through him, beside him. She can’t hear me.
That doesn’t make sense. Ed sits up again—Winry tries to protest, but he shakes her off—and quickly scans the room. It’s basic patient’s room, one of many that exist in the back of the Rockbell house, part of the clinic and automail atelier that is operated from inside the home. White walls, fairly standard. A window with light drapes, slightly pulled aside so he can see the gunmetal grey of storm clouds gathering outside. The door, beyond which Den’s hysteric snarling can be heard.
No other bed.
Brother— Al’s yelp reaches a new pitch, and twin sensations of terror blossoms beneath Ed’s skin. Brother, where are you?!
“M’here.” Ed’s heart thunders against his chest, in his throat and ears, blood rushing to his head.
I—I c-can’t see you—
“Can’t see you either.”
“Ed?” Concern and fear add a new octave to Winry’s voice, and she eyes him the way one might eye a sharp blade pointed at their throat.
Hysteria flares through Ed so intensely he nearly doubles over gasping. Except, with numb horror, he realizes the feeling isn’t his, it’s Al’s. What’s h-happening, Brother? What’s happening oh god what happened to us—
And Ed doesn’t know—
“You want him that badly?” Truth grins, wide and gruesome. “Alright, al-che-mist! You two can be together from now on!”
...oh son of a bitch—
His throat convulses as bile stings hot and bitter at the back of his esophagus. He tangles his hands in his hair (longer and coarser than he remembers), trying to breathe, trying to think, this can’t happening, this isn’t real, this can’t be happening—
Al... No response. Ed chokes. Are you in there?!
He receives a low, terrified whimper in confirmation. The hysteria and distress that pounds against his skull is not his, but it compounds on the horror surging through him, mounts until there is pressure in his throat and his lungs are a moment away from bursting and his stomach lurches so violently it is all he can do to keep the gastric acid at bay.
This isn’t happening, Ed thinks desperately. He tears at his hair, runs a hand over his face, chokes on something that is either a sob or retch or both. This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t fucking happening—
Brother. Fresh horror reduces Al’s voice to no more than a strangled squeak. Your hand.
The breath in Ed’s lungs turns to ice. Unable to keep from trembling, barely aware of Winry’s presence or the sound of her voice anymore, he shakily removes his hand from his hair and examines it.
At first, he can’t quite place what it is that’s unusual. He doesn’t remember his skin being this pale or his arm being this bony, sure. But it’s something else that bothers him, that makes his already-fraying nerves blare a warning of not right, not right, not right.
Thumb, pinkie, index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and—
—and?
Whimpering, he counts again.
Six fingers.
Ed screams.
Sitting before the Gate in their vast godly hall, Truth grins, wide and pleased with themselves.
What greater irony is there for two arrogant creators but to be trapped inside the monstrosity of their own creation?